


all the small things

by altilis



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-14
Updated: 2016-02-14
Packaged: 2018-05-19 11:11:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5965150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/altilis/pseuds/altilis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AP classes, college apps, holiday dinners - no one really understands Kylo's pain like Hux. Or at least, Hux listens and gives Kylo free rides to his fencing lessons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the small things

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacewitchqueen (vixy)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vixy/gifts).



> Much thanks to [sullacat](http://sullacat.tumblr.com) and [kinderjedi](http://kinderjedi.tumblr.com) for reading over this multiple times and making me write it better each time! Thanks guys! ♥♥♥

_back in pdx yet?_

_yeah just got back last night._

_finish your ap gov work?_

_ha._

_want me to come over?_

_yeah._  
  


Kylo sits by his window, twisting a Rubik’s cube to the Radiohead blaring through his speakers, until he sees the a silver BMW pull up in front of the house. He does a double-take, making sure he sees Hux getting out of the car, before he jumps out of his seat, turns down his speakers (it’s not really studying music, as Hux has told him before), and rushes out of his room.

When he gets to the bottom of the stairs his mom is shouting something from the kitchen but Kylo bounds out the door too quickly, just as Hux reaches the top of the driveway, hands in the pockets of his blue khaki shorts, his sunglasses hooked in the neck of his white polo, bookbag strap over one shoulder

“What the fuck,” Kylo says. Hux raises his eyebrows. “When did you get a new car?”

Hux grins, looks over his shoulder at the spotless, gleaming car on the cub. Kylo swears the tires are still shiny. “Earlier this month. Came back from the Stanford program and it was in the driveway.” Kylo pushes away the thoughts of what had been sitting on the driveway in the shade of a towering pine when he had come back from Guatemala: the 1989 silver Pontiac Firebird that Kylo hopes someone will steal before it’s ever given to him.

“Fucking lucky,” he says, and steps closer, offering a hand. Hux takes it, gripping tight as they go in for the bro-hug. Don’t grip too long/too tight, Kylo thinks, but maybe he still does, his fingers curling in the back of Hux’s shirt.

“You boys want something to drink?”

Kylo jerks back and turns to his see his mom standing in the doorway, one hand on her hip. She looks at them, waiting, and Hux answers before Kylo can gather enough words, “If I could have some water, Mrs. Organa,” he says, putting on his ‘charmingly British’ tone he uses to get things from adults.

“Me, too,” Kylo stammers.

 

Folded up in his computer chair, MacBook Air balanced on his knee, Kylo watches as Hux unpacks on his bed: one binder, one lined moleskine, a slim, black fountain pen.

“How was Guatemala?” Hux asks as he pulls out the four paperbacks they were assigned for summer reading, each of them neatly tabbed with post-its, the covers a little warped from folding. Kylo’s own copies sit on his desk, creased and water-stained from when he had fallen asleep under a particularly thunderous rainstorm and the water had leaked through the corrugated roof of his uncle’s house.

“Hot. Sticky.” Hux glances up. Kylo flushes, but he’s glad Hux is way too British to slip a _that’s what she said_ joke. “I mean,” Kylo tries to recover, “it’s the same old shit, you know? Building houses and teaching kids math and meditating on some old Mayan ruins. Hippie shit.”

“It’ll be great essay,” Hux says, always looking ahead.

Kylo lets out an exasperated sigh, running his hands through his hair, feeling it curl at the tips. “Don’t fucking talk about essays. Mom’s already talking about the applications, and I just…”

“You’re just a lazy wanker who can only write things the day before they’re due. I get it.” Hux grins as he tosses his copy of _The Prince_ at Kylo, who catches it and starts to thumb through the post-its. “Now get over it, Kylo - it’s uni, and if you don’t get your shit together you’ll be driving down the street to PSU.” The threat’s a little more direct than his own mother’s worries, but Kylo swallows it down with the same resistance, plucking some of the post-its out and pasting them to the corner of his screen so he can copy easier.

“And what are you aiming for this time, Hux?”

“Cambridge.”

“In England? You gonna live with your mom?”

“I’m gonna live on my own,” Hux snaps back, “but it’ll be good to get away from the prick in my house.”

 

“Why does Hux get a new 5 series?” Kylo asks as he sits at the kitchen counter, digging into a large bowl of mint ice cream.

“Maybe because he actually has a license and wants to drive himself around town,” his dad says from the kitchen, washing out copper pots in the deep kitchen sink, towel thrown over his shoulder. “I’d get you a car, too, Ben, if - ”

“You said you’d give me that old Firebird,” Kylo points out. “And why would I want to drive that piece of shit?”

“Hey!” His dad turns, pointing a sponge at him. “Your mother better not hear you use that kind of language.”

“You use that language all the time.”

“When I’ve got good reason. Being jealous about your friend’s new car is not a good reason.”

\--

Some of his teachers accept his true name. Others don’t ask if he wants to be called something other than “Ben” and his AP Calc BC teacher does it military style and calls him “Organa,” which is the worst. Hux gets all of his teachers to call him “Hux,” not Brendol (or Bren, which Kylo tried once in freshman year until Hux gave him a bloody nose), and Kylo would envy that - if Hux didn’t share that box of Digestives he brought from when he visited his mom in London over the summer.

Hux talks about AP Mandarin and how ridiculous pictorial languages are, and Kylo can’t complain, because he’s been going to Guatemala with his uncle since he was ten and somehow he gets to take AP Spanish. As Hux complains, he gets a smudge of milk chocolate at the corner of his mouth, a little detail that sucks up all of Kylo’s attention and makes his jeans fucking tight.

\--

 _This health class_ , Kylo texts discreetly at the back of the classroom, _is the worst class i have ever been in. i’m surrounded by children. CHILDREN._

Hux replies, _serves you right for putting it off._

Kylo frowns. _you’re a dick._

\--

When Kylo was four, his mom started him off on piano lessons. He had wanted it, after so many years of sitting in his mom’s lap as she played both Liszt and Lennon.

Then around fifth grade, he had shouted at his parents that he hated Mendelssohn, that he never wanted to see another Chopin piece again, and spent the entire afternoon fuming on the backyard deck until his dad had come out, sat down next to him, and gently encouraged him to stick with his practice until he could check out the jazz band at his middle school next year.

It’s his seventh year playing jazz piano. It’s never been his top priority, but it’s a constant. At the end of the day, he usually looks forward to just sitting and pounding out chords with the rest of his band - the same six girls he’s known since 7th grade who drag him to festivals and competitions and aren’t afraid to tell him he’s playing like shit.

At the end of the period when the bell rings and school’s out, Kylo looks over his shoulder from the piano and sees Hux lingering in the doorway to the band room, the black strap of his bookbag crossed over his chest. He gives Hux a smile, then starts to pack up, folding up his music and pulling down the lid over the keys.

\--

Hux gives him a ride Monday and Thursdays to the fencing center. Kylo tries not to feel jealous about this amazing car and the leather seats and the music sync with his iPhone. But it’s a smooth ride, and the first day Hux gives him a ride Kylo finds himself just enjoying it, looking out the window at the trees still thick with summer leaves and pines that drip sap all over the roads and sidewalks. In this old part of town it’s hard to tell where neighborhood ends and shops begin: the fencing center pops out of nowhere.

“Check your phone later,” Hux tells him as he gets out. “I’ll text you about econ.”

“Got it.” And he closes the door, maybe slamming it a little too hard (Hux yells something through the glass), before he walks into the center.

He’s been doing this for five years now. Every day feels familiar - the halls, the locker room, even meeting Snoke, a tall man who always wears a suit like every training day is the Olympics, in his office where he sits reading a book with a cup of tea. But Kylo knows it’s different, everything evolving - he used to do epee and foil and now he’s hardcore into sabre, ready to sweep the competition next month.

“If you focus,” Snoke reminds him, always reminds him. Kylo’s own worst enemy is himself. (Whatever.)

\--

“How was school?” his dad asks him when he picks up Kylo from the fencing center.

“Fine,” Kylo answers, texting.

\--

“How was school?” his mom asks during dinner, after Kylo’s finished his first grilled cheese sandwich and is on to the second.

Kylo shrugs. “Everyone did something cool over the summer. Hux went to Stanford and London. Phasma did some sort of wrestling competition in Estonia. Even Mitaka went on some sort of roadtrip to the Grand Canyon or something.”

“You went to Guatemala,” his mom reminds him gently. Kylo lets out a huff through his nose.

“I always go to Guatemala, like, why can’t Uncle Luke help poor families in Hillsboro? They speak Spanish, too.”

“Ben, you know that’s not the same--”

“It’d be the same for sucking up my summers and being the reason I have to take stupid 6th period Health.” He doesn’t say what he usually says - I never asked for this, why do you keep sending me away? - because he’s tired, and he needs to text Hux after dinner.

\--

Three weeks into the semester and Hux is already bitching about the kids in the National Honor Society, how he doesn’t think they’ll pull their weight. Hux says this every semester, and Phasma will shut him down by saying at least he’s trying to shepherd nerds - she has to shepherd jocks, “with dicks bigger than their brains,” who do and say stupid shit all the time and forget their QB is a girl when they open their dumb mouths.

\--

His first tournament of the year goes terribly. Some fucking kid from Tigard beats him all the way down the mat. After Snoke tells him what he did wrong, how they’re going to fix all of his faults, how he needs to focus -- Kylo punches a dent into one of the lockers.

His dad is waiting for him in the lobby. “Hey, kid, you want burgers?” he asks as they walk out to the car, looping an arm around Kylo’s shoulders, squeezing a little.

“No.”

“Thai?”

“No.”

“Pho?”

Kylo hesitates, then throws his bag into the back seat of the Subaru. “Okay.”

He sits in the passenger seat, arms folded over his chest as they drive to their favorite pho restaurant with unfortunate alliteration (someone clearly hadn’t heard the “sofa king” joke in 8th grade, like Kylo had), while some old songs play out of the Firebird’s speaker. Dad’s been rotating through his cassettes, changing them out every couple of weeks; today’s tribute to Cretaceous-era music is something with an Egyptian beetle on it, and Kylo is just grateful to get out of the car before he has to ask what that has anything to do with boys and girls taking midnight trains and smoky rooms.

 

When he gets home, full on noodles and thin-cut brisket, he says good-night to his mom as she works in the study, then slinks upstairs to his room, locking the door behind him. He sits on his bed in the darkness, running a hand through his hair.

A breath. Then he reaches under his bed, fishing around before he finds it, brings it out and holds it in his lap: an old black pilot’s helmet, nicked and scratched through years and years in the skies of Vietnam. He crushes it tight to his chest, the hard plastic pressing against his sternum, and wonders what his grandpa would do or say -- how he could possibly be a quarter of the man his grandpa was (star pilot, general, joint chief, vice president) when he’s stuck in stupid AP classes and after school fencing and jazz band--

\--

Early October in the Willamette valley, and all the organic, locally-organized farms turn into “U-Pick” orchards, offering flat rate buckets so you can pick as many Fuji and Spartan apples as you can. (There are a lot more, sure, but Kylo doesn’t waste his time on them.)

Hux came with them last year and seemed to not hate it, so Kylo invites him again this time. After they drive over the hills, cross the bridge over the Willamette tributary, and turn into the little farm nestled between a forest and a Christmas tree farm, after they get their flat-rate “rustic” burlap sacks, Kylo sets off in one direction with Hux while Mom and Dad go in another direction. “Meet back here at the store in two hours,” his mom tells him, and Kylo makes a noncommittal sound.

“You finish your app to Cambridge?” Kylo asks, reaching up to pluck one of the low-hanging Spartans; he takes a big bite of the sweet, juicy flesh while he watches Hux study the trees, peering up through branches and leaves to find the best cluster.

“I did. A lot of useless paperwork.” Hux reaches up, plucks three apples off one branch and stuffs them into his bag, then moves on to another tree. “I might have to go to Vancouver for the interview.”

“Vancouver?” Another bite, then with his mouth full of apple: “Why?”

“They only do interviews in the commonwealth, apparently.” Hux pauses in front of another tree, Gala by the look of it, and circles around it, ducking underneath the low branches. “It won’t be awful. I’ll make a weekend out of it.” He approaches one of the ladders leaned up against the tree trunk, triangular and wooden and looking like it was thatched together by 13th-century peasants, and he kicks it a little, testing how sturdy it is.

“Kylo,” Hux says, looking over to him, “would you mind climbing up and getting that bunch?” He points up to a cluster of gleaming, red-orange fruit, perfect and unblemished.

“Always gotta go for the most difficult ones,” Kylo grumbles, taking one last bite of his apple before tossing it aside in the grass where it rolls a little ways down the hill. After thrusting his own burlap sack into Hux’s hands, he starts to ascend the crude ladder towards the bunch, ignoring how the wood creaks under his steps. At the top, one hand braced against another branch, Kylo reaches out and plucks eight apples off their branch and toss them down to Hux.

Then he sees another bunch, and he swings off the ladder completely to plant his feet on one solid-looking branch in the canopy. “Kylo!” Hux shouts from below, “What are you _doing_ \--!”

Kylo ignores his shouts, taking another three apples and tossing them down to Hux, then moving around the trunk, crouched between the leafy branches and not-quite-ripe apples. Then he sees one sitting in the sunlight, small and vibrant and looking like it’d be a sweet second snack, and he reaches out for it.

_Snap!_

The branch gives way and he crashes through the branches towards the grassy ground, but Hux is there--Kylo falls right into him, and they both tumble down the hill, a tangle of limbs and profanity.

They stop where the ridge flattens out under the dappled sunlight of a Fuji tree, Kylo breathing hard as he stares up through the leaves at the clear October sky. Then Hux pushes himself up, his freckled, flushed face filling Kylo’s view and making his breath catch.

“You’re a bloody idiot,” Hux snaps at him, also breathless.

“Sorry,” Kylo says, or he thinks he does; his gaze is on Hux’s lips and he wants so much to -

“Just--don’t do that again, all right,” Hux says as he’s pushing himself off Kylo, and the chill autumn air rushes between them again, kicking Kylo back to his senses, even if his body’s slow to follow.

\--

Second fencing competition. He doesn’t see that kid from before, and he knows all his other opponents - he’s faced them for years. They’re cautious with him, too cautious. Sometimes he draws them out, waits until they strike and misstep and leave an opening for his swinging saber. But then as the afternoon wears on, he takes the first shot more, and more, his blade moving so fast and hard that it snaps against some kid from Northeast.

They spend five minutes trying to find the fragment, and in the meantime, he takes a Gatorade from Snoke and tries to keep up this level of anger and excitement.

“You’re doing well, Kylo,” Snoke tells him, squeezing at his shoulder, “don’t let this distract you.”

\--

Uncle Lando visits for Thanksgiving. His jokes are worse than Dad’s, he starts talking about crazy times around Berkeley Kylo never believes his Dad is capable of, and he asks Kylo what he’s calling himself these days.

“It’s always Kylo, Uncle Lando,” Kylo tells him for the fourth straight year in a row, and when he gets his plate with a slice of apple and pumpkin pie, topped with a generous dollop of homemade whipped cream, Kylo tunes out the rest of the adults around him and texts Hux.

_what are you doing?_

_ap mand hw. you?_

_eating pie._

_getting fat?_

_I AM AN ATHLETE HUX_

_not at this rate._

_you’re a real friend you prick._

\--

Finals are the worst. Calc kicks everyone’s ass. Hux organizes a charity drive and drives everyone else nuts. Phasma takes her team to State, which is great, but then she spends the next couple weeks YELLING at her team to get their scholarship and Oregon and OSU applications in, which for some stupid reason includes Kylo and his applications to the above schools (“plebe colleges,” Hux calls them) and his handful of hopefuls: Harvard and Columbia (Hux’s backups), and UC Berkeley, just to get out of this boring little state and make his dad shut up.

Phasma throws a small party at her house that involves an impressive spread of Paleo dishes and a lot of coconut water, and eventually devolves into Kylo sitting on the couch next to Hux, sipping from a carton of Zico and watching him play Bloodbourne. He’s murdering the single player campaign.

“Have you ever…” Kylo starts.

“No,” Hux answers, his eyes never leaving the TV, fingers moving too fast and precise over the controller buttons. “But the freshmen I tutor talk about this game. Every day. Do me a favor, Kylo - get my planner out of my bag?”

“Your bag…” Kylo looks around, sees a familiar black bookbag tucked against the side of the TV speakers, and gets up to grab it before sitting down on the couch again. He digs through the bag, peering between binders and notebooks until he sees the odd one out: a smaller notebook with a bound, black leather cover. Kylo grabs that and the only ball point pen in Hux’s bag (like fuck he’s gonna struggle with a fountain pen). “Okay?”

“Put a note on Saturday to 'buy Moonstruck chocolates for Mum',” Hux says, still not looking away from the TV. Kylo flips through the pages until he comes to this week. He scribbles the note about buying chocolates into the Saturday, but he also takes a quick peek at the other days: charity/food drives, what finals to study for, but Mondays and Thursdays have a single line with one word: “ _KYLO—_ ”  
This Friday, today, has the same line. Nothing about a party or Phasma’s house, just his name.

His cheeks feel warm. Maybe he’s allergic to coconut water.

\--

_omg poe dameron is coming for xmas dinner im gonna die_

_is this that wanker you crushed on in freshman year? the football player?_

_the one that went to STANFORD? YES ITS HIM_

_use protection._

_i don’t know why i fucking tell you these things._

 

Kylo is used to his Christmases being crashed by distant relatives, political allies, wayward children, or Uncle Luke. What he is not ready for is Poe Dameron to visit, cool-as-fuck, built-like-a-tree, smile-like-a-star Poe Dameron. He’s going to Stanford now on a generous Air Force ROTC scholarship, doing aeronautical engineering on the side because why the fuck not.

Poe’s mother and Kylo’s mom might have been friends once during some late 80s/early 90s environmental clusterfuck (Kylo never really remembers the details), and Kylo might have majorly crushed on him the two years they were in the same high school, but right now, Poe Dameron is the embodiment of everything Kylo hates (and wants).

The doorbell rings and Kylo’s the only one with free and unfloured or unoiled hands, so he answers the door. Mr. Fucking Gorgeous For No Reason stands there holding a bottle of wine in one hand and a paper bag in the other; he gives Kylo a smile that makes Kylo think he just cheated on a boyfriend he doesn’t have.

“Hi, Ben,” Poe says, “long time no see, huh?”

 

_fuck._

_pregnant?_

_THATS NOT EVEN POSSIBLE_

_oregon has strange water, how would i know?_

_no he just brought candied walnuts with cinnamon?? kinda cool. how’s london?_

_cold. but we’re going to monaco in the morning._

_gambling?_

_no - mum’s friends._

\--

Kylo feels like his Christmas break is being stolen from him.

Three mugs of cold hot chocolate sit on his desk between notebooks, writing pads, a handful of different pens, and his Rubik’s cube. It seems like every application is due on New Year’s, and it might as well be, because once they get back to class he’s not going to have time to sit and write out the deep meaning behind his favorite color (black) (because of the challenge of being a true void, of letting things pour into you and reflecting nothing back, a true unappreciated power of the darkness).

(His grandpa had been such a master of that, a true enigma on the political landscape of the 1980s, until he singlehandedly wrenched the life out of not one but four superfluous government administrations, then pulled apart the Soviet-proxy uprising in Guatemala, and even after that he had been a shadow in the White House, seen but never heard).

Eleven o’clock at night. Kylo does the timezone math in his head and figures Hux will reply whenever he’s awake or whenever he’s done lobster-ing himself in the Mediterranean sun. _why the fuck does anyone apply to college?_

Ten minutes later: _the persistent fear of poverty?_

Kylo snorts, then looks up and stares at his grandpa's pilots helmet sitting on his bed next to his backpack. Anakin Skywalker had clawed his way out of humble beginnings from the dusty scrub-brush deserts of southern Arizona, so determined to escape the dull nothingness of that life that he had signed up with the Air Force despite the guarantee he'd get sent to Asia. At least, that was what Uncle Luke had told him in bits and pieces over their Central American summers together. Kylo wonders what that sort of determination feels like, when you don't have a sprawling two-story house in a boreal forest to fall back on. Or at least a job at Fred Meyer.

\--

January comes in with a blast of wet snow and a punch to the gut of homework.

Winter formal is in three weeks and Kylo doesn’t know what the fuck he’s going to do. He tells Phasma as much when they’re having lunch together and Hux is off doing NHS stuff. Phasma levels a patient look at him, her short silver-blond hair curling across her cheek. “You’re kidding, right.”

Kylo blinks at her. “What?”

“Just ask Hux out.”

Kylo snaps from slumping over his lunch to sitting ram-rod straight, crustless ham-and-cheese sandwich dropping onto its foil, and he stares at Phasma wide-eyed. “I can’t ask him out, Phasma. Oh my god, what fucking possessed you to--”

“Because it’s fucking obvious,” Phasma interrupts, popping open her can of coconut water. “You’re not looking at anyone else, are you? And Hux doesn’t even want to go, and I swear, Kylo, if you let that boy graduate without wearing a nice suit to a dance, I’ll send my defensive line after you.”

“I thought you were a lesbian,” Kylo grumbles, slumping again and picking up his sandwich.

Phasma takes a long drink, then sets down the can. “I am. But Zena’s bi and she wants to see Hux in a suit. So there’s your mission.”

“I don’t accept.”

“Tough shit, it’s yours.”

\--

At the dinner table, Kylo clears his throat. “Mom,” he starts, already regretting this, “how did you ask out Dad the first time?”

Mom raises her eyebrows at him; Dad looks a little upset until Mom reaches over and places a hand on his dad’s arm. “Well, Ben, I made time in my schedule and gave your dad an ultimatum.”

“I had kissed her before that, just so you know,” his dad chimes in.

Mom squeezes Dad’s arm. “And I wanted a little more commitment, so I told him to ask me to dinner or he could move back to California.”

“So I asked her to dinner,” his dad grumbles.

This doesn’t help at all. Kylo doesn’t know why he would ever try to ask his parents advice on this when their marriage is the most unique thing in Portland, if not the west coast: rebellious daughter of a VP runs off with some environmentalist group, meets a group of crab fisherman-turned-cigarette-smugglers, have completely impossible shenanigans from Alaska to Baja until there’s a surprise baby (yours truly) and one smuggler takes about eleven months too long to decide he does, in fact, want to be a father.

Sometimes Kylo just wishes his origin story would be like the other kids at school: their parents met at work (either Intel or Nike), decided they weren’t going to find anyone better in this sea of engineers, and then got married to fulfill the American dream of a two-thousand-square-foot house and two-point-five kids (with a crushing mortgage of three-hundred-thousand) (and probably student debt).

It’d just be simpler.

\--

Thursday night before a big AP Lit exam. Kylo wouldn’t say Hux is bad at Lit, it’s just that he so clearly hates everything about it, the authors and the tropes and the universal themes about human empathy and the suffering of the poor. Kylo hates that class, too, but he can at least point out what their teacher wants to hear.

Hux throws down his notebook onto the bed and stands, pacing the length of Kylo’s bedroom before he stops in front of the window that overlooks the deck, the trees, his dad’s squirrel feeder that has singlehandedly introduced obesity to the local fauna. Hux folds his hands on top of his head, stretching with a deep breath. “...if this class stands between me and Cambridge, I’m going to set this school on fire.”

Kylo should be more alarmed, but this pose makes Hux’s shirt and hoodie ride up to the point Kylo can see a flash of pale skin above the waistband of Hux’s Calvin Klein boxer (briefs?). Kylo swallows hard, then his mind goes into overdrive as Hux starts to turn to look at him. Flailing a little, Kylo tosses his Air on the bed and then stands, stepping up to Hux and tentatively reaching out to touch the back of his shoulder - part comfort and part keeping himself sane.

“Let’s go downstairs and get something to eat, okay,” he suggests. “Dad made this cake and it’s great. Really great.” (What he doesn’t say is: please stop being angry, it’s making me uncomfortable.)

Hux drops his hands, and there goes Kylo’s once-in-a-lifetime preview. “Let’s try it,” he sighs.

\--

“Stop.” Snoke raises a hand from where he sits at one end of the mat. Kylo stops, lowering his saber. “What’s distracting you?”

“Nothing,” Kylo says too quickly.

Snoke sighs, shaking his head. “Pack up your things; this session is ending early.” Panic and guilt explode in Kylo’s chest, and he rushes over to Snoke’s chair.

“I can focus, I promise, sir, I--” The words spill out of Kylo’s mouth, desperate to change Snoke’s mind, but then Snoke stands, towering over him even with Kylo’s growth spurt last year.

“But you have lied to me, and you will remain distracted until you tell me the truth.”

“It’s Hux,” Kylo blurts out.

“Hux,” Snoke says, not entirely convinced as he stands there examining Kylo. “If that is the case, then resolve it. Don’t return until you do.”

\--

Two weeks to go. Hux has his Wednesday meeting with the NHS kids. Kylo has a crustless PB&J that he is completely ignoring because his agony is stifling his appetite. “How the fuck am I going to do this,” Kylo despairs, elbows on the table and his hands in his hair.

“What’s wrong?” Zena asks, sweet and oblivious as she eats leftover fried rice from her tupperware, tucked next to Phasma wearing her letter jacket.

“He doesn’t know how to ask out Hux, who is clearly doesn’t understand words strung together in standard English grammar,” Phasma drawls, digging through her ground-beef-sweet-potato-curry Paleo lunch.

Kylo kicks her under the table; Phasma returns it and his shin hurts. “This isn’t a good idea,” he says.

“It’s a great fucking idea. Ask him. Or I can ask him.”

Mitaka, bright-eyed junior and Hux’s second in the NHS, plops down next to Kylo with his tray of pepperoni pizza and a carton of chocolate milk. “Hi all,” he says, chipper.

Kylo turns in his seat, staring at Mitaka as he opens his milk carton. “Aren’t you supposed to be in the NHS meeting?”

“Was,” Mitaka confirms, “but Mr. Antilles had to respond to an emergency, so we’re postponing the agenda until next week.” Fuck, that means --

“Hi, Hux,” Zena pipes up, right before Hux sits down on Kylo’s other side.

“Greetings, plebes,” Hux says, twisting the cap off his bottled water. “I’ve got a free hour now and I won’t spend it reading Anna Karenina.”

“Now’s your chance, Kylo,” Phasma says, and Kylo can’t believe she’s _saying this out loud_ , because now everyone’s staring at him: Phasma with a knowing smirk, Zena bright-eyed and hopeful, Mitaka with blinking ignorance and curiosity, pizza slice already half-gone.

“What is it?” Hux looks at Kylo, too, and Kylo can feel his ears burning. Hux has his ‘expectant’ face, the kind he pulls out during team play in AP Calc when he’s waiting on his opponent to fuck up the integral.

“I--uh,” Kylo can feel Phasma’s gaze, he’s about to get kicked in the shin again, “do you want to go to Winter Formal?” Phasma’s boot taps the side of his ankle. “With me? As friends, you know.”

Hux stares at him. The corner of his mouth quirks. “I suppose.”

\--

The arrangements are out of his hands, and yet they all seem to revolve around his house (“You have the biggest house, Kylo, it kind of makes sense,” Phasma tells him.) Starting from four o’clock in the afternoon, his house feels too full: his parents offer drinks and cookies, Phasma and Zena do crazy things with their hair, Mitaka and the cute sophomore girl from Liberty hold hands quietly on the couch, and all of them talking about his black suit/crimson shirt ensemble.

“It’s a winter formal, Ben, shouldn’t you have something more...blue?” his dad asks. Kylo ignores him.

Hux rolls up in his BMW, gets out with one of those fancy suit bags over his shoulder. “You have a room I can use?” he asks, standing there on the front porch.

Kylo gestures back towards the stairs. “Mine? If Phasma’s done with it.”

“We’ll see.” Hux brushes past him, takes the stairs, disappears down the hall. Kylo darts into the kitchen, seeking out a glass of orange juice to quell the butterflies in his stomach.

When he’s almost done with his glass (and without getting any of it on his crimson shirt), he hears Phasma whistle from the entryway and say, “Now aren’t you the cutest ginger this side of the Willamette. Kylo, get in here.”

Kylo puts his glass in the sink and then steps out of the kitchen and into the entryway, where he looks up and he sees Hux standing on the staircase looking like a fucking GQ model with this charcoal grey suit, a powder blue shirt, a silver tie. (Kylo’s staring, but Hux is staring back at him and--)

“When’s the limo supposed to show up?” Hux asks, taking the rest of the steps down to the floor, one hand artfully in his pocket like he’s the coolest thing since David Bowie.

 

Kylo doesn’t really remember the night other than there being a lot of lights, salmon, fries, Phasma and her girl making out in the moshpit of football players, Hux pulling out some moves that he can only describe as ‘European.’

When they all pile back into the limo, Kylo’s coming down from the sugar rush of two cans of Sprite and some chocolate-on-chocolate fudge cake and the one night he’ll ever indulge in dancing (because it was dark enough and loud enough and Hux was moving into the crowd, too, what else was he going to do?).

He can’t help it that the moment the limo rolls into motion he falls asleep, leaning into Hux’s personal space on the bench seat.

 

“Kylo,” A nudge at his shoulder, a quiet voice in his ear, “Kylo, we’re back at your house.”

Kylo lurches back to wakefulness just in time to see Phasma and Zena getting out of the limo. Hux sits next to him, looks at him patiently, maybe waiting for him to calm down, before he gets out of the limo, too; Kylo follows.

Mitaka’s parents are already waiting to drive him and his date home. Phasma claps both Kylo and Hux on the shoulder, congratulating them for being man enough to be seen dressed nice in public. “Don’t hurt yourselves,” she says to them both, cryptically, before driving off with Zena in her gold Subaru.

Then he and Hux are standing there on the front porch just as it starts to drizzle again. “...you want to come in? Have a drink?” Kylo asks, because that’s what you’re supposed to do when people are at your house.

“Yeah, why not,” Hux says, and Kylo leads the way into the house, into the kitchen, getting two glasses out of the cupboard and then opening the fridge. “Cider? Soda? Almond milk?”

“Scotch.”

Kylo turns around to look at Hux leaning against the kitchen island, then follows his gaze to the bottle of Scotch on the counter. His parents must have left it out after their dinner. And he knows they wouldn’t want him to get into it.

He laughs a little. “We can’t have the scotch, Hux. That’s my parents’.”

“And?”

“And we’re still--we can’t--”

“Only in America.” Hux moves around the island, takes the bottle of scotch, looks at the label. “In England it’s 18 to buy. As long as you can write your own name you can drink.” Hux unscrews the cap and pours some into one of the glasses, then sets the bottle aside. He raises the glass, swirling the dark liquid at the bottom, and then takes a sip. Kylo waits, bated breath, for his opinion, but he doesn’t know why.

“Not bad,” Hux declares, and Kylo hides his sigh of relief in a laugh.

“Like you’re some expert on Scotch,” Kylo teases, grinning--until Hux holds the glass out for him.

“You want to try?”

His first thought is: no, he shouldn’t. But Hux still looks nice in his suit, his fingers curl neatly around the glass as he holds it so close to Kylo’s lips. Then he thinks: Grandpa used to drink scotch. It’s probably one of his bottles.

He raises his hand, taking the glass from Hux; the brush of their fingers sends a thrill down Kylo’s spine. Then he knocks the glass back, taking a long drink of the warm, burny liquid that doesn’t taste like anything Kylo has ever drunk.

 

Kylo wakes up to a dark room and someone moving next to him on his twin bed. His desk lamp gives the entire room a dim yellow glow, enough for him to see Hux picking up his jacket off the ground and pull it over his half-buttoned shirt. Kylo sits up; the room feels cold against his bare chest. “Hey--” His mouth feels dry.

Hux pauses, looking over at Kylo one hand in the back pocket of his trousers. “I gotta go,” he says quietly, “or my dad will--”

“I know,” Kylo murmurs, rolling off the bed and to his feet. He hikes up his unbuttoned trousers with one hand as he steps over discarded clothes to get to Hux. “I, uh,” he starts, realizing he doesn’t know what he wanted to say, so he scrambles, “I liked tonight. A lot.”

Even in this darkness, Kylo can see Hux’s smirk. “Likewise.”

“So can we, er, do it again? Maybe? Not the dance stuff, but like - whatever this was,” Kylo gestures vaguely to the room of rumpled black bedsheets and wrinkled clothes on the floor.

“Hm,” Hux looks to the side, as if he’s seriously judging it in his mind, the fucker. “If you get into Harvard.”

“What,” Kylo hisses, the loudest whisper he can manage and not wake his parents down the hall. “What the fuck, Hux, those applications are already in--”

Hux shrugs. “Then you better pray that they like you enough to let you in.” He buttons the rest of his shirt up, and Kylo sees his hands are shaking. “I can’t spend this sort of energy on someone I’m never going to see after graduation. It’s too much.”

“What are you talking about,” Kylo asks, a desperate strain in his voice as he takes Hux by the arms and shoves him up against the bedroom door. (Not for the first time, Kylo sees how lean and thin he is, and a part of Kylo thinks how unfair it is for him to overpower Hux like this.) “If you’re going to go to Cambridge than it doesn’t fucking matter--”

“I’m not going to Cambridge.”

Kylo blinks, stares. “What?”

Hux doesn’t look at him. “You heard me. It’s the back-ups now,” he says with a short, bitter laugh.

“Fuck,” Kylo whispers, and he lets go of Hux’s arms to cup his face, because that feels right and he doesn’t know what else to do besides press their foreheads together and smother Hux in his warmth. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, you can’t do anything about it,” Hux says, and Kylo ignores how his voice cracks, how he’s shivering. “Especially since it’s the same odds at Harvard.”

“I can pray,” Kylo points out, and that’s enough to get a chuckle from both of them.

\--

Snoke lets him come back to fencing practice, and Kylo throws himself back into preparing for the next competition. He pushes himself until he’s shaky on his legs, and then at the end of the practice plops himself on the concrete floor next to Snoke’s chair and chugs a fruit-punch-flavored-Gatorade.

“Have you decide to pursue something with Hux? Or have you ended that?” Snoke asks him, watching him closely with his dark eyes. When Kylo finishes off his bottle, Snoke holds out another bottle of Gatorade, and Kylo takes it eagerly, twisting off the cap.

“Sorta neither,” Kylo says, then takes another big gulp. “We’re not going to do anything until we know where we’re going for college. He doesn’t...he doesn’t want to waste time.” A little bit of that stings, but Hux is right: it would be a waste of time. It’s not like they aren’t still friends. Just not friends who kiss, or hold hands, or make Kylo’s bed feel twice as small.

“I see,” Snoke says, nodding slowly. “As long as it does not distract you from qualifiers next week.”

\--

“Mom,” Kylo starts at the breakfast table on a Sunday morning, when both of his parents are in a good mood: Dad is making waffles and Mom sips a mimosa while she reads the WSJ, “can you talk to the admissions guys at Harvard again?”

His mom glances up, “Ben, I already put in a word for you, anymore and they’ll say I’m pushing legacy down their throats.”

“Not for me,” he says, tapping his fork and knife against the edge of the counter. “For Hux.”

“Hux?” his mom echoes, eyebrows raising; she shares one of those looks across the kitchen with Dad, who just shrugs. “I’m not sure what I can say about Hux.”

“He’s brilliant and he does way more math and charity stuff than I do,” Kylo says, thinking about all the things Hux has complained about at lunch, in his BMW, while they study. “And he’s a total patrician. He’d blend in perfect.”

His dad laughs. “Well, when you put it that way…”

His mom rolls her eyes. “I still don’t know, Ben. Why don’t you ask Luke? I’m sure he hasn’t used up his call, yet.”

\--

Qualifiers is possibly the most important fencing competition of his senior year, if not his entire career. If he qualifies, he can say he “went to State,” regardless of whether he wins at the state level. Getting to that level could make or break his college applications, giving him that extra hook once it’s clear this isn’t just a hobby. 

The weight of the competition weighs on him from the beginning of the day. “What if I bomb out, and never get to state,” Kylo ponders aloud, half panicked, as he sits next to Snoke and watches the competition. “What if I don’t get to Harvard but Hux does?”

“Concern yourself with qualifying today,” Snoke says, handing Kylo his mask. “Keep your mind clear.”

“But--”

“If you qualify, go to the state competition, and succeed, Kylo,” Snoke interrupts him, speaking firm as he looks him in the eye. “Your colleges will fall into place, including Harvard. I will take care of it. Now, focus.”

 

When he goes home, his shoulders hurt and his thighs feel like he’s run a marathon, but he qualifies. Him and that little girl from Tigard, who is in a different weight class because she’s barely a freshman (and thank god, because she moves too quick and scares the shit out of Kylo, like the first time she kicked his ass in October).

\--

Getting a hold of Uncle Luke is always a challenge: you always have to call between certain hours when he’s going to be having tea in his jungle hut and hope the monsoons haven’t washed away the phone line stretched out along an old gravel road that winds between towering trees and jagged mountain peaks.

Landlines. Kylo is pretty sure that’s the only reason his family has one. At least it still allows him to play Neko Atsume on his phone, waiting for the ringing to stop in the handset cradled against his shoulder.

“Hello?”

Kylo snaps to attention, flails upright, and loses his cell phone in the couch cushions. “Uh. Hi, Uncle Luke. It’s Kylo,” he stammers, holding the handset tight to his ear.

“Kylo!” The smile permeates through his uncle’s voice so easily; Kylo imagines him sitting at the little kitchen table next to the stove, books around his clay pot dinner and his machete leaning up against the table. “This is surprising. How are you?”

“Er, good, you know - busy. Senior year.”

“I’m sure.”

“Yeah, so, uncle, I--” Kylo runs his free hand through his hair, “--I wanted to talk to you about Harvard.”

“Oh, you’re applying?”

“I did. And like, you know that people that have gone before can call the admissions office and tell them, like, ‘this person is awesome and you should admit them,’ something like that.”

“Do you need me to call them, Kylo?”

“I do! But uh, not for me. I--uh--there’s a friend of mine, Hux, I told you about him last summer,” when he had particularly hated how sticky and hot it had gotten between rains, when he had curled up beside his cot with his face in his hands and told his uncle how much he’d rather be in Beaverton having a chocolate shake at Burgerville with Hux where they could talk about philosophy and social darwinism. “And I want him to get in, too, but if I’ve got a call in at admissions and he doesn’t--it’s less likely, right? That’s not fair to him; he’s great, he needs to get in.”

Luke makes a thoughtful sound over the phone, the familiar crackle of contemplation. Kylo feels his stomach twist into knots. “Can you tell me more about him?”

Kylo takes a deep breath.

\--

“Do you remember the girl who defeated you at the start of the year?” Snoke asks Monday while Kylo’s warming up. “You need her speed, along with your power.”

Kylo makes a disgusted noise, but after seeing his trainer’s glare, doesn’t argue the point.

 

“Hey, Hux,” Kylo says at the beginning of AP Calc, turned around in his chair, leaning his elbow onto Hux’s desk with his forearm sprawled over Hux’s open planner. “Can I get a ride to the fencing center today?”

“It’s Tuesday,” Hux says, frowning slightly at Kylo obstructing his planner.

“I know,” Kylo says. His arm doesn’t move. “But state, you know. Gotta kick ass if I’m going to the Ivy league.”

Hux looks up and gives him a flat look, unimpressed. Kylo grins.

 

“Your moves are sluggish and small,” Snoke tells him from his chair on Thursday.

“I’m tired,” Kylo says, rolling his shoulder back. “Today we had an Econ test and last night--”

“Irrelevant,” Snoke interrupts. “Make it a priority to rest, or you’re simply preparing for the slaughter. I do not call coaches on behalf of sheep and cattle, do you understand?”

He has his mask on, luckily, so Snoke can’t see him bite his lip or fight down the flush to his cheeks. “Yes, sir.”

 

“What do you mean you didn’t finish the homework?” Hux asks during Friday lunch time, right before Calc. 

Kylo shrugs. “No time. Have to sleep for competition.” It makes his stomach twist in knots, still, to leave it unfinished, but Hux doesn’t need to know that.

“Lot of eggs in one basket,” Phasma says from across the table, checking the answers in her packet to Hux’s.

“It’s the only basket I’ve got,” Kylo says, “and second semester grades only matter when you get in, anyway.”

 

When they say state, they really mean the Pacific Northwest, and no one in their right mind ever hosts anything in Oregon, so they have to drive all the way to Seattle. Kylo spends the entire four hour drive alternating between sleeping, texting Hux, and asking if they can stop by a McDonalds for one of those apple pies. “Those things are full of GMOs, Ben,” his mom says on the third refusal.

“But they’re tasty,” Kylo says, because he doesn’t give a fuck about GMOs, but he doesn’t want to hurt his mom’s feelings, since she spent half the year pushing a bill through the Oregon senate about them.

 

There’s so many people, the lights are too bright, he does need both speed and power, but he also needs to focus through adrenaline and a crazed desire to win: his hamstring twinges, and the pain is enough to cut through all of it. It floods his body with endorphins every time he lunges too hard. He doesn't tell Snoke until after, when he takes the second place trophy.

\--

A Monday afternoon in late March: they walk through the school parking lot after school. Hux likes to park in the back; there’s less of a chance of a Prius scratching his fender. Kylo doesn’t mind so much anymore, his limp has healed over.

As the car comes into view, covered in droplets from an early-afternoon shower, Kylo swallows hard and forces himself to ask, casually: “Did you get into Harvard?”

“I did,” Hux answers. No smug satisfaction in his voice, no obvious glee; Kylo could have been asking him if he got gas early that morning for all the difference it would have made in his voice. The nonchalance spurs a strange sort of anger in Kylo’s chest (had enough of your shit, Hux) and it’s enough to make Kylo lunge forward and push Hux up against the trunk of his own car, one hand fisted in his Burberry raincoat.

Kylo kisses him - like he remembers through his blurry, Scotch memories and incognito browser time - rough and a little demanding. Hux’s hand comes up to his shoulder, long fingers digging deep in the muscle, his lips are parting and that feels familiar, comfortable, just right -

They’re both breathless when Kylo pulls back. With both of their hoods pulled up against the March breeze the rest of the parking lot seems a hundred miles away: all he can see is Hux’s flushed, freckled cheeks and his wide green eyes. “I’m guessing you got in, too,” Hux says, like he doesn’t expect anything less.

“Fuck yeah, I did,” Kylo says, grinning. The letter had come in the mail Saturday, and Kylo had smuggled it away to his room before his parents got a chance to see it. He’ll tell them today at dinner, maybe.

“Let’s have burgers tonight,” Hux murmurs, squeezing Kylo’s shoulder. “I’ll buy your shake.”

“That’s it?”

“Harvard isn’t cheap, Kylo.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also [on tumblr](http://cutequirk.tumblr.com).


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